Interview: Gamecock CEO Mike Wilson

Industry veteran whose career spans from id Software to Take 2 and most recently Gamecock Media, acquired by Southpeak this week. Join us for a revealing chat about what developers really want, Legendary, and even Max Payne 3.

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Kikizo: What's the situation with Alex Seropian, the former Bungie guy - I understand he's working with you on a game?

Wilson: Yeah, Hail to the Chimp - it's done! [The game is out now in North America and hits Europe at the end of October]. It's a beat-'em-up party game for the 360 and PS3. Those are platforms that don't really have a lot of those types of game! So we'll see. Basically Alex took a bunch of those guys back that didn't want to stay at... you know, they all didn't move to Seattle, to Microsoft - some of them loved it, some of them stayed, and some of them didn't, so he's back in Chicago with his team, and they want to make 'funny' games. They feel like comedy is an area that is really not touched on at all in this industry, and when it is, it's like 'game developer comedy'. So they've actually hired professional comedy writers from television stuff. I'm going to go ahead and say that Hail to the Chimp is probably the funniest game that's ever been made, because that was their goal from the start, and they hired the proper writers... you know, go figure! [laughs]

Hail to the Chimp

Kikizo: I wanted to ask you about Legendary as well - it seems more of an epic title.

Wilson: It's our first big shooter game. Like, it's a big, proper, fuck-off shooter! [laughs] It's basically the story of Pandora's Box, so you play a jewellery thief that's been tricked unwittingly into opening this box, and all hell breaks out and brings back all these creatures of legend into the modern world. So then you've got helicopters flying around with giant griffins! And let me tell you, shooting a griffin with a rocket launcher is a very satisfying experience! And you've also got these sort of military guys you're fighting as well at the same time, and they're also fighting the werewolves, the griffins, the firedrakes and all these creatures of myth that come back from Pandora's Box, and now they're just wreaking havoc on the modern world. It's a really interesting and really intense game. It's a shooter's shooter; it's a lot to take, because you're having all these three way fights!

Kikizo: So Atari is publishing this game in Europe though - how does that affect your publishing mantra? How do the developer of this game [Spark] get that same sort of deal overall with someone else involved?

Wilson: No, this is one that we picked up; this game was with Atari at one time, and was with Vivendi at one time. And as you've seen recently, sometimes things get cancelled by these big publishers, for... no apparent reason! So it was a huge opportunity for us to pick up a really big game that was already almost done. So it's very different from the rest of our deals. But, Spark does own the IP.

Velvet Assassin

Kikizo: From a consumer's perspective it's possibly a profile raising title for Gamecock?

Wilson: Oh, yeah, for sure. Because you know, there's been this ramp up - you know, we've only been around for... well, we've been funding games for a year and a half now. And it takes a year and half or two years to make the bigger games. So we've been putting out little DS stuff, you know, party games, things that don't take so long. So now, Legendary is sort of the kick off of the big stuff.

Kikizo: Is Velvet Assassin also part of the big stuff?

Wilson: It's not quite as big as Legendary in terms of budget and scope, but yeah, it's a first rate game. It's a front line 360 and PC title. It's one that we picked up, that's been around for a while as well - it was called Sabotage before - it's one that could have been an OK game, and we picked it up sort of on that basis, and we liked the developer a lot, and we liked the premise. And then we decided to re-invest in it, and the game will come out now is far and away better than the one we signed! And we really like the developers - it's a World War II game coming from a German team, you know, that actually acknowledges the Holocaust in the game, which is interesting.

Legendary

Kikizo: You guys are described as industry veterans and entrepreneurs, so I am interested in your career to date, and how it led up to Gamecock.

Wilson: Er, well I was just 'random entrepreneur guy', doing everything from stores and malls to firework stands and frozen daiquiri shops in the southern United States, and then one of my mates was one of the guys who was just a pen and paper artist, that became one of the guys that did Doom. [laughs]. And when they blew up, first, I went to go and work for this company called Dwango, that was the first online service where you could play Doom online against each other from home, over modems. I did that for about six months, and I guess they were impressed enough with that, that they hired me when they were blowing up - basically just someone they could trust - to handle the PR and marketing, the 'big-ness' of it all. So id was really where it kicked off, and where all the principles that Gathering and Gamecock were founded on, came from, because id was one of the first teams to fight for their IP rights, to put their name of the front of the box, all that stuff.

Kikizo: Well they certainly own the rights to do whatever they want with their stuff these days. They, along with Valve and Epic, actually call the shots with the publishers...

Wilson: Yeah, they own Doom, they own Wolfenstein, they own Quake... and yeah, so I was very lucky that that's where I started, because that's where all of these ideas came from. And the developers that are successful with us, make enough money like Firefly and Croteam, that they are independent, meaning they don't need us anymore - and that's who we want to work with, that's who we try to build these teams into, so that they can work with whoever they want - and they choose us, because we've helped make them successful.

Velvet Assassin, Mushroom Men, and Legendary, are all scheduled for release around late October and early November - now as part of Southpeak Interactive.

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